


Heart Strings

by rothalion



Category: Army Of Two (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:30:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rothalion/pseuds/rothalion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Devil's Cartel. This is a secondary scenario I am playing with to work out what happens to Salem after he gets out of the prison. I'm not sure how it fits with the cut scene in the credits, but I have a plan for that. Any way here it is. It is not related to Resurrection, but a different outlook on the situation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Strings

**_ Heart Strings _ **

**_ ONE _ **

 

“Rios.”

“Tyson it’s O’Dell. Look I just got word from Altiplano; they are through with Elliot. They have arranged with DEA to send him home. A psych facility until we can get a better handle on his condition. I can have him brought to Mansfield, it’s a great facility, I can be his doctor, and it’s close to you.”

“Here?” Tyson asked trying to wrap his head around the sudden news. He wasn’t sure he was pleased, or actually frightened by the idea of having Elliot so close by. “Ok Odie, when?”

“Quick, Tyson. Once I make the call he will be restrained, sedated, and flown stateside.”

“Right, right ok yea tell them yea, Mansfield it is.”

“Matter of hours then, meet me at Mansfield They’ll know to expect you.”

“What’s that about boss man?” Bravo asked.

“Salem, Salem’s coming home.”

“Home?”

“Mansfield, Mexico’s fed up with him.”

“Sure that’s a good idea, can’t he go somewhere else?”

“No, here will be ok.”

“Rios,” Alpha said evenly, “I’m not sure there’s much a Salem left man. You saw…”

“He’s in there Alpha, he’s in there. You saw him, you heard him, but I held him in my arms, and he is in there.”

“That’s bull shit, and you damned well know it! You held him while he put a bullet in your gut!” Bravo snapped.

“I attacked him. I blew it, and if I’m going to fix him I need to let all that go.”

“You attacked him! He wiped us out to the man down there!”

“Back off, Bravo! You have always been against the man. You said you came here to work with him, then once you met him the two of you were like oil and water. We are family, and we take care of our own.”

“Easy Giddy, this whole thing has been hard for all of us. Look, get Heck, and get a chopper prepped. We need to get to Mansfield post haste. As for you two, I’m only gonna say this one time; you either come on line with this, or hand in your resignations, because if it ever comes to pass that Elliot can come back here in some capacity I will not tolerate any shit from either of you. Also consider yourselves dead should either of even think about getting revenge for Fiona. Dismissed.”

“Yea, about Fiona? He executed her!”

Tyson looked hard at Bravo. The man reminded him of Salem when Salem was still naïve enough to believe that being innocent provided a man with salvation. He also knew what the duo did not. Fiona had played them. Fiona was in far deeper, and had far more elaborate plans than anyone besides himself, Giddy, Heckler, and the original inner T.W.O circle were privy too. The details had unfurled in the weeks after the failed mission. The innocent, supposed operator for the Mexican Police forces was anything but that. She was triple agent, sent in by her father’s cartel to take out Bautista from the inside under the guise of the police. She’d also duped Rios, and sold his men to slaughter as well. That she withheld her knowledge of El Diablo’s identity from Tyson for nearly six months of preliminary planning closed the door to Rios ever feeling even the slightest shred of remorse for how she’d died.

“She became a combatant when she picked up a weapon. She killed his boss; she became just as expendable as the rest of us.”

Then, before Bravo could retort the comment Giddy grasped him by his shoulder and steered him from the room.

An hour later in the corridor of Mansfield Mental Health Facility Rios shook Dr. Sammy O’Dell’s hand. O’Dell had been SSC’s mental health doctor, and then T.W.O.s for several years after Shanghai. He final left to take up a private practice in Atlanta closer to his aging mother.

“He gave them hell.” He said shaking his head, and gesturing for Tyson to join him on a battered Naugahyde sofa. “They are enroute though, ETA an hour and a half tops. So you’ve really had zero contact with him?”

“No I called, I went there, I sent him letters he didn’t bite, and refused to see me.”

“Dr. Ramos faxed me all of his findings. I did a quick perusal, and fuck Tyson the kid runs the gamut.”

Rios chuckled. “The kid, can’t think a the last time I thought of him as, the kid.”

“Yea me either. He goes from depressed to manic, to suicidal; the PTSD kicks in, and he spins out of control from that. He told Ramos that Bautista tortured him, withheld medical treatment and pain meds from him, just really played with his head I’m guessing. I think, and Ramos agrees that it was Stockholm Syndrome Tyson, Paradoxical Support they made him need them. They stripped you from his mind. He didn’t sleep, wouldn’t eat, and was generally when he had the strength, combative. His behavior forced them to keep him in solitary for his own safety.”

“Prognosis?”

“I’ve only seen him once; a week after they took him in. He was, as I have told you, completely non-communicative. He was addicted to pain meds for his burns, and he was in at least I think a state of shock. They’d just begun drying him out so he was sick as hell too. As I left he coughed, and asked about you. I reassured him that you would make a full recovery, and he just nodded, and went back to staring at the wall.”

“I miss him. I never stopped missing him, and I’m not gonna lose him again. I refuse to. If I have to take him outta here by force, and go live up on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere to find him again I will; the company be damned. He’s still in there I know it, I felt it.”

“I hope so.”

Tyson stood as the gurney carrying Salem pushed through the double doors at the end of the ward. They had restrained him hand and foot, and he was still sedated. He’d lost weight, a lot of weight Tyson noted, reminding him of the scrawny kid who’d come into his life like a fiery comet so long ago. He swallowed hard, and fought back tears. So long ago, and so much pain and hardship had plagued them.

“Give us a moment please.” O’Dell asked the orderlies.

“He’s coming around a bit, so hurry. They want him in his room before he wakes up. He’s considered highly aggressive.”

“Thanks.” Rios responded studying Salem. He looked anything but highly aggressive. He was emaciated and the burns, now that Rios was finally getting a good look at them were horrible. He was amazed that Salem had been able to function as El Diablo, but then he recalled the pain medication, without that the man would have probably been nearly incapacitated.

Tyson ran his hand back through Salem’s sweaty hair, leaned down and unabashedly kissed him on his forehead noting the small half-moon shaped scar. He ran his thumb across it, and smiled slightly recalling the train op in South Korea when he’d slammed the younger man head first into s shipping crate knocking him unconscious.

“Welcome home Ellie, welcome home my brother.”

 

 

 

 


End file.
